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I mean, you could have said Elvis Presley was new wave when it happened. I heard Willy DeVille and Tom Petty and to me they were new wave really because they were new.
When people come to the show they think we are a legendary band because they hear us on Classic Rock radio all the time. It is psychological. That's okay - I'm down with that.
I figured if you want to get to where John Hammond is or Billy Gibbons is or Peter Wolf is, you have to start listening to the same stuff they did, and learn from that, and that's what I did.
Led Zeppelin, they still rule the airwaves. I hear Zeppelin every day, and they've been around since '69. So the people who grew up with that still listen to that, and now their children listen to it.
This music has been around since before the beard on Moses. I happed to do it very well and I happen to have a lot of groovy songs that I know people are going to dig. I know more about it than you do.
After the Ed Sullivan Show, Feb. 9, 1964, at approx. 8:04pm [laughs], after that moment every album, every guitar, evey set of drums that was ever sold ... 10% should have gone right into their pocket!
My father had a couple of Mitch Miller records and a Spike Jones record, and that was it. My older brother had two or three Elvis Presley singles, and that was about it. The rest of it I did on my own.
I hate categories. Hank Williams is a great artist, period. Bob Dylan is a great artist, so is Marty Robbins. They just classify these people and put them in categories so they can sell the thing easier.
The [2012 covers album] 2120 [South Michigan Ave.] was different. We covered a lot of classics there. But most of the time when we did it I always prided myself on digging up obscure songs that no one knew of.
There are now grandmothers and grandfathers coming to see us because they are of that age, they grew up in the '50s and '60s and they bring their sons and their daughters to hear the songs they heard when they were young.
Look at Gleason in The Honeymooners. He was humorous but the way he lived wasn't really humorous. He was a bus driver. Who wants to be a bus driver? He didn't have any money and he was not famous. But despite that, the show is humorous.
I figured the people who liked the sort of thing I was doing would come see it. If it was only 200 then that was alright and if it was 2000 then that is alright as well. I wasn't really interested in the big numbers; I was just interested in some numbers.
I said if you want to be Keith Richards, you've got to listen to Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. Then I thought, "What did Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry listen to?" I said, "They listened to Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters." Well who'd they listen to? They listened to Robert Johnson. I said, "Ok, we'll start with that."